Thoughts and insights on technology and business

hackathon

Our industry is full of disruption. There is no such thing as business-as-usual; the norm. Our world is constantly changing and reshaping. It can be scary, but it can also be an incredible journey.

Each year, Datacom holds an intense, 48-hour hackathon called Datacomp. Competitors from across the entire Datacom group descend upon Auckland to compete and use new and different technologies in ways that we normally don’t get to in our day jobs.
For me, Datacomp embodies this uncertain and amazing ride we have embarked on in the technology sector. Each year exposes us to new challenges and compels us to try new and exciting things.

It’s about pushing the boundaries, exploring new ideas, camaraderie and a big heap of fun: it’s Datacomp.

Friday

There’s always a nervous excitement as you prepare for the kickoff. Since we had arrived early, we could catch up on correspondence but also get to see the final preparations as the Auckland office became Datacomp HQ.

Decorations going up, competitors checking in and the buzz around the office. There was an electric excitement in the air as the moment approached and MC/organiser Kerry Topp stepped up to the stage.

In 2016 the theme was “It’s Personal”: using cognitive technology to create innovative systems. For myself, it was also personal: this time I was going to do something different and bring an idea from one of our customers. This meant I wasn’t going to join a team; I had to form a team.

Knowing how much effort people put into “pre-forming” teams, I was extremely nervous about trying to form a team on the night: I had just two minutes to pitch an idea and at-tract people to my cause.

Each year pitches get better and more creative. You have not seen anything until some-one raps about creating a smart AI to recommend restaurants.

Auckland’s Joon Park rapping his Datacomp pitch

Luckily our team, Community Pulse, came together. But as the team captain I discovered that getting a team was the easy part…

Too Many Ideas

The best advice I can give to anyone competing in a hackathon is the advice I heard from VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith: no matter how much time you have, always spend a third planning.

One of the hardest challenges at Datacomp is focus: You only have 48 hours and there are hundreds of things you can try. We set aside Friday night for planning and we had one key aim: choose one great idea.

The challenge is not dismissing the bad ideas, it’s actually getting rid of the good ones – and it is hard. As captain, I had to listen thoughtfully to the team and take their advice and views on board. Everyone in your team has a different perspective that needs to be respected and considered.

There were a few times I had to drop some of my own ideas as we drilled down. A good captain should listen (and learn) from their team, as well as keep discussion focused and time-boxed.

We quickly learned to listen to our business mentor. Each team was allocated a mentor to help articulate concepts from a commercial point of view. Sometimes it can be confront-ing when you’re challenged on your concepts, but this is part of focusing and distilling. If the idea does not stand up under scrutiny, it won’t survive the judging on Sunday.

At about 10pm we finally had our concept in place. We would create an app that would match potential volunteers with organisations in need. We were ready to start framing and forming up how it would work.

So with Friday done, we took an “early mark” to prepare for Saturday.

Saturday – The long march

Saturday is best described as an emotional rollercoaster. As the smallest team in the competition we had to be extra focused.

Datacomp is more than just hacking together code – just like in our day jobs there are multiple parts that go into the solution. We had a young graphic designer making the screen designs, a data analyst running Microsoft Machine Learning over volunteering data, guys from Managed Services, Business Unit Managers and two very hard working developers.

There were however some lighthearted breaks such as the Datacomp Auction. Things I learned about the auction:

Everyone votes for themselves

Never bid against someone who wants to use drones to help special needs kids watch sports from home when too sick attend in person

Listen to your heart and let the dance come from deep within your soul. Yes. Settling ties through dance offs. By geeks. Who cannot, and should never, dance.

Datacomp is a pressure-cooker, especially on Saturday, but there are lighter moments. Like our team’s Shia Leboeuf motivational video and another team’s Amazon Echo error handling – my favourite moment of Datacomp. It was about 1 AM and I took a five-minute walk and discussed the Echo AI technology with one of the developers from team Chicken Soup. Then they showed me this little gem: if you told the Echo you wanted to go on a trip yesterday it would say “Let me just back up the time machine for you… beep beep beep”. To me this was Datacomp in a nutshell. The technology was fun and they were having fun with it.

Sunday – It all comes together

As the presenter, I was sent back to the hotel to sleep. I needed to bring my A-Game to the presentation.

Of course I slept in.

A mad rush back to the team room (OK, with a stop for a quad-shot coffee) and back into the fray.

We had a minimum viable product. We had a lean canvas business plan. We just needed to nail our presentation. Luckily, we had some great support again from our mentor and the more business-focused guys in the team to pull it together.

It was time.

The feeling once midday comes around on Sunday is one of nervous anticipation. You have just a few minutes to convince the judges that your system not only works, but is a good idea.

Having done singing and theatre was a definite help. You need to relax, make the case and above all: keep to your time. Timing is essential; otherwise, you lose the opportunity for the judges to ask you questions and lose points for going over. If there’s one thing a presenter must be fully aware of, it is the time.

And then it was over.

The other teams brought some fantastic concepts to show the judges. It really showed the diversity, teamwork and innovation Datacom can bring to the table. When you see these ideas come to life, you cannot help but think, “Wow! I work for a really great company: look at all the cool things these guys have done!”

What is a win?

Before Datacomp, my objective was to create a good, tangible idea to bring back and develop with our customer. Coming into the competition without a pre-made team and the smallest group on the weekend, we had nothing to lose. After our presentation I felt satisfied: I had worked with a great team, been able to experience the fun that is Datacomp and we had something to show for our effort.

Oceania 17, Enviropulse and Chicken Soup were awarded the top prizes and deservedly so – there was some amazing technology that really delivered on their goals.

Dr. Daniel Thomas celebrating at Datacomp 2016.

But something quite unexpected happened. We were awarded the “Advance to Go” prize. This means that the judges saw the benefit of our idea and want to help grow it and see where it leads. For an idea related to the community sector, this was a humbling moment. As I write this, I have already started working with others to turn our app into a commercial reality.

Final Thoughts

The thing that I really enjoy most about Datacomp is the privilege of meeting so many amazing people. I am proud to work for such a company; we build each other up and expand our horizons.

Dr Daniel Thomas is a Senior Consultant for software solutions at Datacom.

In part one of this story, we looked at the big picture – what you need to think about ahead of time, and who you need to consult. In part two, we’ll look into the nitty gritty logistical detail.

Define the key milestones
The key milestones in a hackathon are:

Finalise the theme

Set date

Launch event/registrations open

Registrations close

Training

Finalise numbers for catering

Run the event

Post-event round up

Build the plan and execute on it
From there, think about logistics and build your plan. For brevity I have assumed that you are running your own internal hackathon, not an external event where you might charge for attendance.

Start planning 8-10 weeks out. Be careful to look out for scheduling conflicts with other major events or potentially look to leverage these events if you think this makes sense. One year, the Datacomp organising committee – who were predominantly made up of fathers – missed a scheduling conflict with Father’s Day.

The plan you build can be lo-fi or it can be run on a tool such as Project or Trello. To make it easier I have put the plan together in order of when completion of the task is required.

Theme – create an interesting or fun theme that has a ‘hook’ for would-be participants

Test the theme – test the theme with would-be attendees, see what their reaction is

Start and end time – decide when you want to kick off and when you want to finish. Friday evening through to Saturday or Sunday is best

Duration – Decide on the event’s length. 24-48 hours is ideal

Food – test and decide on meals, snacks, drinks. Offer vegetarian and vegan options and ensure you have enough for everyone. Best advice: don’t skimp on the food!

Power – Have power boards available for each team and ensure there are enough power outlets as a lack of power has the potential to make or break your event

Networking – This is an imperative, it absolutely must work! Make sure you have a wired and wireless backup available and expect two connections per attendee

Audio visual equipment – ensure you have a projector, mic, recording equipment etc and test ahead of time. Don’t leave this to chance – particularly if you are planning to live stream

Livestream, video and photography – this is another must do. It allows you to tell a story and create a connection which will live long after the event is finished

Presentation and Q&A length – Five minutes is good – three for the pitch and two for Q&A.

Judges – Select the best possible judges from across industry – including startups and larger enterprises

Training – depending on the type of challenge, training workshops can take place ahead of the event and are a great way for newbies to come up to speed, but also for all participants to pick up new skills

Prizes – Prizes should be subject to budget

General Rules of Thumb
The following general rules of thumb stand based on what we have seen running these types of events;

Not all hackathons are created equal. At Datacom, we know this first hand, because we have run five of them in the last four years.

Our own internal hackathon, Datacomp, was first run as ‘Metrocomp’ in 2012. 30 Datacom employees, all from Auckland, took part. Each year, the competition has grown as people have poured in from across other geographies to take part. Our most recent Datacomp, held from 24-26 July, had about 130 participants from Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra.

The quality of the solutions presented at the end of the weekend was phenomenal, and everyone – participants, judges and organisers – commented on how successful the weekend had been.

If you want to run a successful hackathon of your own, we have some strategies, best practices and rules of thumb we use to ensure events are valuable, productive and fun for everyone.

What is a hackathon?
At Datacom we define a hackathon broadly as:

A “pressure cooker” event where people come together to rapidly, creatively and innovatively solve problems. A hackathon doesn’t necessarily have to be about technology.

In our hackathons participants typically form into groups of at least five people. We don’t set a maximum, but we’ve found that a team of more than 10 gets difficult to coordinate and impacts momentum.

To get a sense of what a hackathon looks like, check out this video of our 2015 competition:

Here’s what to do before you start planning.

Define the objective – be clear about why you are doing it
Define what the objective of the event is. Is it a cultural exercise first and foremost or is it about the deliverables? Be very clear about what the event is and what it’s not and stay true to the objective throughout the whole process. It’s the whole organising team’s job to ensure that the original objective is kept front and centre throughout hackathon planning and execution.

Define success
Decide on what success looks like by determining the overarching goals of your event in measurable detail. For example you might want 120 attendees, 12 prototypes or hacks delivered, or 10 recruits. This will give you a metric for your post mortem review.

Here are some examples from Datacomp 2015:

Criteria

Target

Measured by

Staff engagement (event)

Minimum 100 people across AsiaPac participating in Datacomp

Number participating

Staff satisfaction & engagement (post event)

Minimum of a 4 out of 5 rating for the event

Satisfaction survey

Customer testimonials delivered to sales channels (post event)

Minimum 2 customer testimonials via case studies post event

Production of testimonials

Staff testimonials delivered to recruitment (during event)

Minimum 2 staff testimonials via video during event

Production of testimonials

Staff testimonials delivered to recruitment (post event)

Minimum 2 staff testimonials via case studies post event

Production of testimonials

Social media coverage

General: positive social media sentiment from staff and customers participating

Standard Social Media coverage

Assign accountability and pull together the organising team
Determine who the sponsor of the event is. They are generally the one who is funding the event. Once this is done determine who is the owner of the event. This is the person who is accountable for making it happen.

Once these two key roles are filled, you can then form the organising team around the event owner. No more than five people is optimal and they must all be committed to making it happen. There is no room for ‘passengers’ in a hackathon organising team.

Consider the stakeholders
When planning a hackathon event, consider the perspectives of each of the following: participants, organisers, mentors, judges and spectators. Working through the use cases of each party will help ensure the event is well-rounded and increase the likelihood of accomplishing the goals of the event.

In the next part of this two-part series, we’ll look at all the logistics – you know who you need to consult, but what do you and your organising team need to actually do?

At Datacom we know that innovation means mixing the best ideas we can muster with new global thinking around technology, and then applying these solutions to real-life business problems.

Earlier this year, we held an event called Datacomp which encouraged our people to come up with creative ways of using motion control devices Leap Motion and Kinect. The ideas that came out of it were new and fantastic, with the winning team building an end-to-end solution with a real business case for retail.

In November, we held another internal ‘hackathon’ called #CloudSmash. This time around, developers and infrastructure workers from all over the business came together to work on innovative solutions, tailored to take advantage of the breadth and depth of the hyperscale cloud.

The event was definitely competitive – there were twelve teams, made up of staff from Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch, all competing to come up with the most creative and robust idea to take advantage of the hyperscale cloud’s flexibility. Half of the teams were working with Windows Azure, and the other half with Amazon Web Services.

While the teams’ ideas were important, they also had to be able to implement them well. Everyone was working for a fictional small-business customer – a role expertly played by Datacom’s Scott Bennett – to solve the same problem in a short time period.

Our staff thrive on events like #CloudSmash because it gives them a chance to challenge each other and try out their ideas and be rewarded, but it’s also good for the company.

“What we’re doing … will give us ideas that we can put back into our business that will deliver a lot of value for our customers,” said event organiser, and Datacom Auckland’s business manager of cloud services, Arthur Shih.

We spoke with two of Datacom’s cloud experts, cloud services director Rob Purdy and senior solutions advisor Stu Fox, to get their thoughts on what makes a cloud solution stand out. And while innovation was an important factor, Rob said #CloudSmash teams had better think about new ways of doing the basics first.

Security is also paramount – our people were working with a lot of their customer’s intellectual property that needed to be protected.

Stu said overarching all that was the need to be modern – our people needed to focus on new technologies and ideas, and using those technologies in interesting ways.

“You could rebuild a legacy infrastructure on this platform, but by doing that you aren’t taking full advantage of the power these platforms bring,” he said. “You should be trying to do things differently.”

Doing things differently means learning, regardless of how experienced you are. The cloud’s untapped potential, said Rob, is in its sheer scale. There are so many tools and possibilities that knowing what to do with the cloud is half the battle. The next step is tying in good service.

“We’ve got one group that signed up for a service and got a call five minutes later saying, ‘What do you need? We’ll help you set it up’,” he said.

“This is the next wave of IT – where people can go sign up for a service online, pay for what they need, and get instant service from the vendor.”

Unsurprisingly, the winners of CloudSmash were the team that embraced the capabilities of the hyperscale cloud to its fullest and worked hard to deliver extra value to the vendor. The team utilised the full Windows Azure stack to deliver an end-to-end application, website and collaboration platform. What set the winning team apart from the rest of the competition was not only the rich functionality of the production planning and ordering system, but also the deep automation and reporting of the operational aspects of the environment. With a globally decoupled design and outcomes-focused dashboards, they were able to demonstrate an environment that could scale based on the business needs of the customer, all while ensuring 100% uptime.

While only one team could win, the innovation was truly amazing. Great ideas included two-factor authentication with real time phone call back; native mobile apps for factory workers that updated as new orders came through; one-click operational patching and many others. All in all, it was a fantastic and innovative day that brought many great ideas that we look forward to sharing.